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TEXTILE EDUCATION 
AMONG THE PURITANS. 



BY 



C. J. H. WOODBURY. Sc. D. 



Read before 

The Bostonian Society, 

COUNCIL CHAMBER, OLD STATE HOUSE. 
BOSTON, MASS. 

April 18th, 1911. 



TEXTILE EDUCATION 
AMONG THE PURITANS. 



BY 



C. J. H. WOODBURY, Sc. D. 



Read before 

The Bostonian Society, 

COUNCIL CHAMBER, OLD STATE HOUSE, 
BOSTON, MASS. 

April 18th, 1911 



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TEXTILE EDUCATION AMONG THE PURITANS. 

The more spectacular religious and governmental oppressions 
of that day often overshadow the economic conditions which 
were fundamental elements in the settlement of New England 
by the English. 

England had been growing poorer in common with conti- 
nental Europe. Population had gradually grown, and the 
primitive conditions of husbandry failed to increase crops com- 
mensurate with the greater consumption, and handiwork had 
not received the aid of machinery to develop the larger pro- 
duction of cloth. 

None are too poor to fight and the burden of wars, both civil 
and foreign, throughout Europe perhaps developed irritation 
and discontent of poverty which made taxation by the state and 
rates of the church especially onerous burdens. The whole 
story of daily existence in Europe was told by the Pilgrim author 
in three words, " Life was hard." 

The details of war, rather that the greater victories of peace, 
usurp the pages of history, and in like manner the printed books 
of colonial days are largely devoted to polemics among the clergy, 
relations with the Indians, and a great amount of petty legislation 
inevitable with the conditions of a new country, while the events 
of daily life which led to substantial results in the founding of a 
nation were rarely printed, and such as exist were, for the most 
part, found in old letters, inventories and accounts. 

Outside of the daily press, a comparable condition as to the 
record of commercial affairs, exists with us today. 

Of the many in England discontented with their lot, there 



were some who had available resources sufficient to come to 
Massachusetts Bay, which had been visited for many years and 
mapped for over twenty years. 

PROSPERITY OF THE PURITAN COLONISTS. 

Whatever may have been the desires of many to emigrate, 
travelling to colonize was an expensive matter, available only to 
the prosperous. 

The selective character of the New England colonists was 
as well understood as it is today, and in a sermon WiLLlAM 
Stoughton said, " God sifted a whole nation that he might 
send choice Grain over into this Wilderness." 

The Puritan pioneers were not poverty stricken refugees, and 
their sufferings were largely due to ignorance of more severe 
climatic conditions than those of the old country, which they 
were not prepared to meet, and it was merely a lack of available 
resources at the first. 

It is strictly in line with what is to be presented in this paper 
on their fertile expedients to provide themselves with cloth that 
a reference should be made to their domestic ingenuity such as 
their origin of banking around houses, placing clay between the 
studding and keeping it in place with clay-boards, now known 
as clap-boards, anticipating building-paper, by birch bark under 
shingles which has been known to last over a century, and packing 
houses with seaweed to keep out all land vermin, — later the sub- 
ject material of a patent not yet expired. In their meeting 
houses was originated the closed pew, in place of open benches 
of the old country with their inevitable drafts. The origin of 
foot-stoves has eluded all my searches for an answer, but I cannot 
learn that they were ever known in England, although the 
later introduction of large stoves into meeting houses divided 
at least one parish at the time of the Arminian schism. 

Whenever a glimpse of their daily life can be obtained, there 
is found most fertile resourcefulness of method. 

It has been estimated that the fifteen hundred who came to 
Salem in 1628-30 brought with them property to the amount of 



fully a million dollars. Silks, furs, and plate abounded in the 
colony and yet in a few years there was such a shortage of cloth 
that sheep skin garments became a necessity. 

The dress of the period for both men and women in circum- 
stances to have their portraits painted, which appears to be the 
best measure of prosperity and social standing in early days, 
was elaborate in cut, color, and decoration, and the right to the 
dress of the gentleman or the gentlewoman was fixed by statute 
in Massachusetts Bay, as it was in England, limiting the privi- 
leges of wearing gold and silver lace and other ornaments to 
those of estates above certain amounts. 

Inventories and also correspondence v/ith the old country, 
ordering outfits, contain a vast amount of dandified detail. 

Wherever there were instances of unusual prosperity, condi- 
tions akin to an aristocracy prevailed. The prosperous class 
were Tories almost to a man as they or their wives did not wish 
the supply of luxuries of dress from abroad stopped. The 
Revolution by the impoverishment or the expatriation of these 
Tories brought these aristocratic assumptions to an end. 

Later simplicity leading to fashions of the present day in 
men's garb, at least, may have been forced by the scarcity of 
varied fabrics and more especially the material for ornamentation. 

Although I shall run from the Colony to the Province, as the 
facts may lead, the purpose of this paper is to call attention to 
the fertility of mental resources exercised by this seashore colony 
in providing themselves with cloth when a suflcient supply 
could not be obtained from the mother country, and vexatious 
as her commercial prohibitions may have appeared, it is evident 
that the earlier laws of this nature were defensive, because 
England had not the wool to spare. The Pilgrim writer claimed 
that " warrs had kept down the sheepe." 

Two irrelevent conditions proved to be of vital benefit to the 
Colony, first : the efforts of Elizabeth to reform the methods of 
taxation, by equalization as people had means to pay without 
undue distress and not to rest directly upon agriculture, had 
not been fully developed under Charles the first, and indeed 



6 

contains open questions to this day; but she performed one 
act ultimately of untold value to the colonists of Massachusetts 
Bay, who came from the eastern counties of England in the 
very territory where she had colonized spinners and weavers 
from the Netherlands and these people had taught others of 
their skill, so that these Puritan emigrants were the best equipped 
of all England to spin and weave. 

The general exercise of such skill undoubtedly became a 
necessity rather than an early intention among the Colonists. 

Another condition helpful to the Colony was the fact that the 
increasing scarcity of meat had impelled those living in the 
shore countries of England and Europe to go after fish, and 
finding the great supply of cod in the north Atlantic they sailed 
the high seas and developed a race of skilled navigators from 
Scandanavia to the Mediterranean, who traversed the ocean to 
great distances in small boats whose return to port was evidence 
of bold seamanship. 

While Endicott's Colony did not contain many fishermen, 
those of the Dorchester Colony which came from Devonshire, 
which reaches from the English Channel to the Bristol Channel, 
who earlier came to Cape Ann and thence to Salem, and the 
Manxmen who later came to Marblehead, — and brought their 
dialect with them, — were fishermen, who added to the strength 
of the little Colony whose fortunes they shared. 

THE PURITAN PURPOSE. 

While the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony recites 
its purpose to be the conversion of the Indians to the Christian 
religion, yet it is an historical fact that the Puritans came over 
for business rather than for sentiment, and when a Marble- 
header interrupted the minister with "we came here to fish, 
and not to worship God," he undoutedly vied with the sermon 
in an irreverent declaration of truth, with out any disparagement 
to the " soundness " of the longer discourse from the pulpit. 

They intended to catch fish for the English market, but in 
fact, were forced to send them to the West Indies and Spain in 



order to obtain cotton and wool. They expected to buy beaver 
skins from the Indians on their own terms, but the savages were 
such keen traders that the struggle for self-preservation 
developed the proverbial Yankee shrewdness. 

They expected to depend upon the old country for supplies, 
even to their drink, for there was such a general belief in England 
that the water in America was unfit for drink, owing doubtless 
to the brackishness of tide-washed springs at the shore where 
early travelers filled their water butts, that Endicott's fleet was 
ballasted with casks of ale. 

Even angle worms were brought over for bait in fresh water 
fishing and the English angle worm, a different species from 
those indigenous to this country, still exists in some localities. 

It may be difficult to state their economic intentions other 
than to remain a loyal, subservient colony, but the neglect of 
the Mother Country followed by repressive commercial legisla- 
tion developed their mental resources into an independent 
condition, a century before it was one of record. 

No one with facts at hand can pretend that this was a land 
of liberty, for there was greater personal freedom in England 
as the very fact of the thousands of non-conformists who 
remained there, either in relative peace or to fight out their 
differences, attests. 

This colony was no democracy, Governor JOHN WiNTHROP, 
the broadest mind among them, inveigled most bitterly against 
general representation. The first freemen were qualified May 
1 8, 163 1, and a count of those so elevated above their fellow- 
men up to 1 64 1 when the population was first known, showed 
that out ol a colony of 21,000, there had been 1,293 qualified 
as freemen although on account of death and returns to Eng- 
land, the maximum number at any one time was probably less 
than 1,000 freemen. 

In a country fringing the seacoast, although their charter 
conferred jurisdiction westerly to the " South Sea," yet they 
were content with the judgment of an exploring party sent out 
from Salem who reported that the country was not worth the 



while of more than one plantation running back a league from 
the sea, save at some places where two leagues might be worth 
the while. 

These pioneers were of that middle English stock still feeling 
the pride of strength from the advancement which they had 
received at the expense of the prestige of the aristocracy as 
some of the results of the wars of the Roses which rehabilitated 
England, except as to the condition of the peasant farm laborers 
which continued as before. 

The extent to which this little band fringed between the 
savages and the deep sea developed their own self reliance is 
shown by the manner in which they applied the principles of law, 
developed under generations of monarchies, to the solution of 
problems of local self government, and beyond that they initiated 
new functions of government, notably the written ballot, trade 
schools, industrial statistics, free public education, the town 
government, the separation of church and state, citizen militia, 
printed paper money and the record of deeds and mortgages. 
Well did Carlyle characterize the people who showed such an 
initiative as " the last of the heroisms." 

COTTON AT THE TIME OF THE COLONY. 

The relation of England and the North American colonies to 
cotton contain some unexpected anomalies. 

Cotton appears to have been the oldest known fabric in the 
Orient, where its use for cloth is prehistoric and uninterrupted 
to this day. It was mentioned in the Old Testament, in Greek 
and Roman writers ; it was related with strange exaggerations 
by early travelers to the East as MARCO PoLO and Sir John 
Mandeville, and was used for clothing as far to the West as 
the army of JULIUS C.-ESAR. 

All of the early explorers to the portions of the western 
hemisphere where cotton was indigenous mention this plant and 
its use for cloth. 

It must have been well known to the Crusaders who brought 
most of the luxuries to England and northern Europe. It must 



have been within the academic knowledge of the clergy and 
scholars of the laity in England, yet there did not appear to be 
any general use or even knowledge of cotton cloth in England 
until long after continental Europe and New England. 

The earliest reference to cotton in an English book as far as 
I have been able to learn, is in " Nova Britannica ; Offering 
Most Excellent Fruits of Planting in Virginia," London, 1609, 
in which the statement is made that cotton would grow as well 
in that province as in Italy. 

"A Declaration of the State of Virginia," London, 1620, 
mentions cotton among the " naturall commodities dispersed up 
and downe the divers parts of the world all of which may be had 
in abundance in Virginia." 

It should be noted that these citations refer to prospective 
cultivation of cotton, rather than to it as a commercial com- 
modity, and passing by certain references in letters, the earliest 
mention in an English book of cotton as merchandise to 
be received in England is said to be " Treasure of Traffic," by 
Lewis Roberts, 1641, in which it is related that cotton woole 
had been received in London from islands in the Mediterranean 
and thence sent to Manchester. Later records show that it 
was used for beds, and I have been unable to find any refer- 
ence precisely indicating when cotton spinning and weaving 
was begun in England. 

Barbadoes and other of the West Indies were settled by the 
English at about the same time as Massachusetts Bay, and cotton 
from these islands was sent to England as well as to American 
colonists. Obstructive navigation laws were a hindrance to its 
importation, and the spinning of this fibre in the old country 
must have been conducted from the first on a very limited scale, 
and evidently without that commercial importance, which was 
the case in New England. 

The Poor Law of Elizabeth, 1601, cites the raw materials 
used in manufacture, and yet makes no reference to cotton, as 
would have been the case if it was spun at that day. 

Samuel Pepys records in his diary, February 27, 1663-64, 



10 

" Great good company at dinner, among others Sir Martin 
NOELL, who told us the dispute between him as farmer of the 
Additional Duty, and the East India Company, whether callicos 
be linnen or no, which he says it is, having ever been esteemed 
so ; they say it is made of cotton woole which grows upon trees 
and not like flax or hemp. But it was carried against the 
company, though they stand out against the verdict." 

Would that we knew the results of the appeal against the 
intrepidity of ignorance in this departmental ruling, but the 
gossipy diarist does not make any later record on the subject, 
and as he would have gloated over the' discomfiture of the 
reversal of the ruling, it is assumed that the Calicut cloth was 
legally adjudged to be " some sort of linnen." 

Yet the Colony of Massachusetts Bay was legislating upon 
" cotton woole " as a well-known commercial raw material twenty- 
four years before this time. 

Two notes o1 record on the early use of cotton in this country 
may be revelant in this connection. 

Christopher Columbus, who was the son of a weaver, dis- 
covered in this hemisphere, corn, cotton and tobacco, but does 
not appear to have regarded them as anything out of the ordinary 
of expected curiosities, so great was his eagerness for gold and 
gems. In his diary he relates that after he had left the Island 
of San Salvador on the occasion of his first landing, the natives 
swam out to the boats, bearing balls of cotton thread as presents, 
and later in the evening came out to the ships in their canoes, 
with more balls of cotton, some weighing over twenty-five 
pounds. 

A few days later, he refers to cotton cloth used by the natives 
of another island, and similar references are repeated in the 
accounts of visiting numerous islands. 

What is evidently the earliest record of cotton in this vicinity 
is contained in the account of Champlain of his battle on the 
west shore of Lake Champlain, July 2, 1609, where he refers to 
arrow-proof armor worn by the chiefs, consisting of strips of 
hard wood bound together by cotton yarn. 



11 

This cotton could not have been raised in that vicinity, but the 
commerce among the Indians was exclusively barter and 
extended over long distances. 

The Indians in the natural cotton belt in Georgia and the 
CaroHnas are known to have spun cotton, and although any 
known samples of that product in the North have long gone out 
of existence, yet if any exclusive product of the Indians at the 
North has been found in the South, it is fair to assume that 
cotton yarn was among the articles exchanged in the barter. 

The arrow heads made of the peculiar rock of Mount Kineo, 
at Moosehead Lake, Me., and not existing elsewhere in this 
country, have been found in Alabama, Ohio, and Indiana, thus 
showing the extent of their distribution. 

The only original fabric of the Indians in Massachusetts which 
has been found is the plaited rather than woven cloth made of 
the wild hemp. 

NEW ENGLAND TRADERS BEFORE THE SETTLEMENT. 

When the first settlers came to Massachusetts, the Indians had 
to a slight extent, a red cloth made of a mixture of wool and 
flax, known as Shag, and probably as irritating as the shirt of 
Nessus, which they had obtained from the early explorers and 
fishermen who had sailed along the coast for nearly twenty 
years, and they were eager to barter skins for cloth, which 
formed the basis of the trade in beaver skins and forming an 
important commerce for more than a generation. 

The extent of these antecolonial visitations of fishermen and 
adventurers, along the New England coast — all of them 
traders, — is indicated by the " Welcome Englishmen ! " of 
Samoset to the Plymouth Colonists, and the evident ease of com- 
munication with the Indians at all the later settlements, shows 
that it had been sufficient for the savages to learn considerable 
of the English language. 

As an instance of the measure of communication and its 
inevitable errors at earlier dates, it will be noted that the 
charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony vested to it from 



12 

three miles north of the Merrimack to three miles south of the 
Charles, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the " South Sea" 
which was supposed at the time to be a branch of the ocean 
reaching from the west to the vicinity of the present site of 
Albany, N. Y. 

The source of this authority was from the information received 
from the Indians by the earlier travellers, and probably resulted 
from an attempt of the Indians to communicate some informa- 
tion in regard to Lake Champlain, the largest body of fresh 
water lying within the United States. 

ENGLISH RESTRICTIONS UPON COMMERCE IN CLOTH. 

Commerce with the Mother Country would have been beset 
with difificulties even under the most adventitious conditions. 
Vessels were small, rarely over lOO tons even after the Revolu- 
tion, and generally less than half that tonnage, and could make 
but two round voyages to England in a year. Freights were 
^3 to £4 a ton, an enormous amount in those days, which 
has been estimated as the equivalent of eight times that amount 
at the present day. Thus without considering the obstructing 
legislation of the Navigation Acts of England, there were legiti- 
mate commercial difificulties in the way of obtaining a supply of 
clothing from England, and the serious condition of affairs and 
the remedies which were initiated were fully set forth in the acts 
of that very paternal government, constituting the court of the 
governor and deputies which legislated upon every conceivable 
detail of person and property. 

The English Navigation Acts, 1662-1685, intended to secure 
to English shipping all available commerce, among them being 
cotton, wool, and indigo. These acts were so contrary to the 
natural courses of trade that they were evaded and scarcely 
enforced. 

The export of sheep, wool, and woolen yarns from England to 
the Colony was prohibited in 1665, and an export duty levied 
on woolen cloth, and commerce between the American colonies 
had been forbidden at an earlier dav. These unwarrantable 



interferences virtually made smuggling very general among the 
Colonists, if such a term be fairly applicable to illegal commerce 
under such conditions. 

The extent to which this repressive legislation failed of its 
purpose is shown by the fact that the Complete Tradesman 
issued in England in 1663 makes no mention of commerce with 
New England as a field of export for English woolens. 

It is only fair to call attention to the skill of the Florentine 
merchants who bought the rough woolen cloth woven in Eng- 
land and dyed and finished it in a superior manner by the skill 
of their guilds, and not merely interfered with the English 
market on the continent, but also sold large quantities of it at 
a greatly augmented price in England. 

The relations of CROMWELL with the Colony of Massachusetts 
Bay were fickle, although posing as a friend, restrictive legisla- 
tion was enacted during the protectorate. At one time he con- 
templated joining the colony as its ruler, at another moving it to 
Jamaica, and later to transfer it to Ireland, but the roots had 
grown too deep. 

The relations of the colony with the Mother County were 
summed up years later by David Hartley, who was the sole 
commissioner on the part of Great Britain to sign the Treaty of 
Utrecht which closed the Revolution, when he declared in the 
House of Commons that for 150 years England had given no 
aid or encouragement to those who sought to establish the 
English race on these shores, but left them to battle with 
the Indians and to defend their own frontier, and forced the 
Colonists to buy in her market and to pay the prices which were 
demanded. 

The Colonists realized this, and their first seal bore the Mace- 
donian cry, " Come over and help us ! " 

All parties in England appeared to be a unit in seeking to 
keep the Colony in an absolutely dependent commercial condi- 
tion, and to permit only agriculture, lumbering, fishing and 
peltry. 

Lord Chatham, the proverbial friend of the Colonies, stated 



14 

that if he had his way they would not be permitted to make a 
horseshoe nail. 

Years later when FRANKLIN as the agent of the Colonies was 
asked by the Council in London, " Suppose the external duties 
were to be laid on the necessaries of life?" gave the amazing 
answer, " I do not know a single article imported into the 
Northern Colonies but what they can either do without or make 
themselves. The people will spin and work for themselves in 
their own houses." 

Severe as this legislation may appear, it was not vindictive, 
but merely a correspondence course in stupidity. England was 
poor and needed money, therefore she taxed everything avail- 
able ; the people were poor and it was assumed that it would 
help matters if such taxation was so framed as to drive colonial 
customers to merchants in the Mother Country. 

History repeated itself when GEORGE III. wanted the town 
residence of the Duke of Buckingham, and the Council stated 
that the Exchequer had no money. " Tax the American 
Colonies!" said the King. Buckingham Palace was secured, 
the tax levied, the minority in the Colonies ruled and the cord 
snapped. 

INSTRUCTION IN SPINNING. 

Spinning and weaving were entirely domestic occupations, 
until about the time of the Revolution, and there must have 
been considerable manufacture of cloth during the earlier days 
of the Colony among those who came across the Atlantic, but 
the younger generation were not under the instructing influence 
derived from the spinners from the Netherlands, and with the 
distracting conditions of the new country they were not continu- 
ing with the same skill, and heroic measures by the Colonists 
were necessary in self-defense to make provision for clothing. 

Let the acts in their sequence tell the story which abounds in 
detail if not perspective. On November 8, 1633, the scarcity of 
cloth had evidently begun to conform to the commercial condi- 
tions of higher prices, as the court on that day regulated the 
prices of many articles adding with covert threat, 



15 

" And for lynnen & other comodities wch in regard of their close 
stouage & small hazard may be afforded att a cheap rate wee do 
advise all men to be a rule to themselues in keepeing a good con- 
science assureing them that if any man shall exceede the bounds of 
moderacon wee shall punish them seuerely." 

Without citing more than typical acts of legislation, the tirst 
measure which attempted to provide a physical remedy other 
than attempts at commercial regulation of prices which were 
probably as unfeasible in the face of commercial conditions then 
as they have been ever since that time, was the act of May 13, 
1640, which introduces provisions for industrial statistics and 
industrial education, and indicates that somebody had been 
thinking wisely and concluded that the time for action had 
arrived. 

"This Court takeing into serios consideration the absolute necessity 
for the raising of the manufacture of linnen cloth, &c., doth declare 
that it is the intent of this Court that there shalbee an order setled 
about it, & therefore doth require the magistrats & deputies of the 
severall townes to acquaint the townesmen therewth, & to make inquiry 
what seede is in every towne, what men & weonien are skilfuU in the 
braking, spining, weaving, what meanes for the pviding of wheeles & 
to consider wth those skilful! in that manifacture what course may bee 
taken to raise the materials & pduce the manifacture & what course may 
bee taken for teaching the boyes & girles in all townes the spining of 
the yarne & to returne to the next Court their severall & ioynt advise 
about this thing. The like consideration would bee had for the spining 
& weaveing of cotton woole." 

This was followed by the act of October 7, 1640, giving a 
bounty of 25 per cent, for textile manufactures. 

" For incuragment of the manifacture of linnen, woollen and cotton 
clothe, it is ordered that whosoever shall make any sort of the said 
cloathes fit for use and shall shewe the same to the next magistrat or 
to 2 of the deputies of this Court, upon certificate thereof to this Court 
or the Court of Assistants, the party shall have alowance of 3d in the 
shilling of the worth of such cloth according to the valewation wch shal 



IC) 

bee certified wth it. And the said magistrate or deputies shall set such 
marke upon the same cloth as it may bee found to have bene alowed for ; 
pvided this order shall extend onely to such cloth as shalbee made 
wthin this iurisdiction, & the yarne heare spun also, & of such materials 
as shalbee raised also wthin the same, or else of cotton. This order to 
continue for 3 yeares next followinge." 

This was evidently not entirely satisfactory, as it was repealed 
June 2, 1641, eight months later, and on the same date, legisla- 
tion was passed indicating twice that the supply of cotton was 
insufficient for the existing demand, and also refering to the wild 
hemp which was evidently derived from the practices of the 
Indians with this as their only indigenous source of textiles to 
which reference has already been made. 

" This Cort takeing into consideration the want of cloathing wch is 
like to come upon us the next winter & not finding any way to supply 
us so well as by cotton wch wee find not like to bee pvided in dew time 
for the present want & venderstanding withall from the certain knowl- 
edge of divrse of the court that there is a kind of wild hempe growe- 
ing plentifully all over the countrey wch if it were gathered and 
improved, might serve for psent supply until cotton may bee had, it is 
therefore ordered : " 

And here follows provisions for the gathering and use of wild 
hemp, and its spinning mornings and evenings through the 
seasons "that the honest and profitable custom of England may 
be continued." The latter appears to be the earliest reference 
to spinning in the old country. 

The same line of constructive legislation continues, for on 
June 14, 1642, the following act was passed: — 

" This Cort taking into consideration the great neglect of many 
parents and masters in training up the children in learning & labor 
& other imployments wch may bee profitable to the common wealth do 
hereupon order & decree that in every towne the chosen men for man- 
aging the prudenciall affaires of the same shall hencefourth stand charged 
wth the care of the redresse of this evill. They are to take care that 



17 

such as are set to keep cattle bee set to some other impliment withall 
as spinning upon the rock, knitting, weveing tape, & for their better 
pformance of this trust committed to them they may divide the towne 
amongst them, appointing to every of the said townsmen a certeine 
number of famiUes to have speciall oersight of, they are also to pvide that 
a sufficient quantity yf materialls as hempc, flaxe, &c., may bee raised in 
their severall townes & tooles and implements pvided for working out the 
same & for their assistance in this so needfuU & beneficiall impli- 
ment, if they meete with any difficulty or opposition wch they cannot 
well master by their ovvne power, they may have recorse to some of 
the magistrates." 

This " spinning upon the rock " is a unique reference not 
known to occur contemporaneously elsewhere, relative to a 
method of spinning obtained from the Indians. The rock was 
a whorl of stone or dried clay in the form of a torus, or a round 
doughnut in which the hole was small enough to prevent from 
passing through the large end of the wood spindle forming the 
distaff and in this manner acts as a small fly-wheel on the 
spindle and also keeps it in a vertical position. The clay and 
pottery whorls found among the Indian relics in the south-west 
are generally covered with elaborate decorations. 

On May 14, 1656, the Court enacted further legislation whose 
preamble indicated an alarming state of affairs on the scarcity 
of cloth, which urgently called for immediate action as set forth 
in the act, which was in part : — 

"This Cort taking into serjous consideration the present streights & 
necessities that lye vppon the countrje in respect of cloathing, which is 
not liked to be so plentifully suppljed from forraigne parts as intjmes past, 
&not knowing any better way & meanes conduceable to our subsistence 
then improoving as many hands as may be in spinning woole, cotton, 
flaxe &c, — 

" Itt is therefore ordered by this Court and the authoritje thereof, that 
all hands not necessarily implojde on other occasions as woemen, girles 
&boyes, shall and heereby are enjoyned to spinn according to theire skills 
&abillitje ; & that the selectmen in euery toune doe consider thecondi- 
con & capacitje of euery family and, accordingly assess them at one 
or more spinners ; & since severall familyes are necessarily imployd 



18 

the greatest part of theire tjme in other buisness, yet if opportunities were 
attended, sometjme might be spared at advantage by some of them for 
this worke. Tiie sajd select men shall therefore assess such familyes at 
half or a quarter of a spinner, according to their capacitjes ; secondly, 
that euery one thus assessed for a whole spiner doe, after this present 
yeare, 1656, spinn, for 30 weekes euery yeare, three pounds p weeke of 
lining, cotton, or woolen, & the select men shall take special care for the 
execution of this order and shall haue power to make such orders in 
theire respective tounes for the clearing of comons for keeping of sheepe. 
And thedeputjes of the severall tounes are hereby required to impart the 
mind of the Cort, for the saving of ye seede both of hemp & flaxe." 

The dffferences in the provisions for the enforcement of the 
acts of 1642 and 1656 reveals a change of conditions between 
the old country and the new. 

In the first instance, it was entrusted to the masters, being 
master workmen of the English guilds who had come over pre- 
sumably with the Salem colony fourteen years before, as there 
had been but httle other immigration, and at the time of the 
second act, it was as much later, and these twenty-eight years 
added to the age of a master workman of mature age at the time 
of the settlement would bring him beyond active labor, and in 
the sere and yellow age, if indeed living. 

As the guilds were not perpetuated in this country, it became 
necessary at the time of later legisiation to use the authority of 
officers of Colony and towns which had been established by the 
Court in developing the government of the Colony. 

This legislation indicates the wonderful scope of initiative 
in the minds, as we find here provisions for the first public 
education, which was vocational and textile education, and also 
industrial statistics. 

The oft quoted act establishing free public schools sustained 
by general taxation where our ancestors learned their letters 
from the horn book, and in the scarcity of paper learned to write 
and to cypher on birch bark, was not passed until 1647. 

Would that we knew the man who framed the legislation 
which met the issue so decisively, in order that later generations 



19 

might keep him in grateful remembrance for the action which 
undoubtedly preserved the Colony, and also served as a nucleus 
which in due time developed the textile manufacture of New 
England. 

Such individual instruction was not accompanied by records 
to reveal the various steps and details of the work, but the 
more important matter of the result is known and that is, the 
people were adequately furnished with homespun cloth or there 
would have been further legislation, and some outcries in ser- 
mons, account books or inventories would have furnished a 
record. 

There is however, one record which sums up the whole result 
of this stimulus both of textile education and the provisions for 
raw material and that is in the contemporaneous Johnson's 
Wonder Working Providence in New England in 1652, stating 
that the people made more than enough clothing for their own use. 

Some clothing at a price did come from England as account 
books show, but it was evidently far less than required for 
supplying the needs of the people. 

As woolen goods require to be fulled, the establishment of 
fulling mills were matters of record in the sale of land, develop- 
ment of water power, and permits to build, in settlements 
throughout the colony where there was a water supply for the 
purpose, and this gives records showing the weaving of wool, 
while the spinning and weaving of cotton being a domestic 
handicraft, made no comparable record. 

Rowley appears to have been a textile headquarters which 
failed to develop into leading conditions for the textile manufac- 
ture in years later, probably from lack of water power and deep 
water transportation, as flax, hemp and cotton were woven there 
in large quantities before 1639 and this centering of the 
industry attracted twenty families of Yorkshire weavers to settle 
there in 1643. 

THE SUPPLY OF COTTON FOR NEW ENGLAND. 
The acts of the General Court show that " cotton woole " was 



20 

well known in the Colony in 1636 and various records show 
that the earlier importation of cotton and indigo from Barba- 
does, which appears to have been in many instances a generic 
name for the West Indies, was extensive ; and this importation 
continued until the war of 1812. 

The Desire of Salem, the largest ship .of her day, returned to 
that port in 1638 with a large supply of cotton. 

The Trial, 160 tons, was the first ship built in Boston and her 
first voyage was to St. Christophers in the West Indies for a 
cargo of cotton. 

Salt fish, staves and Indian captives were sent to that fertile 
island in exchange for cotton, molasses, and "ye inspiring Bar- 
badoes drynk " and negro slaves. I have been told by an 
observant traveller that Indians sent there and intermarrying 
with the negroes were sufficient to hybridize the kink in the 
wool to a wave, remaining to this day nearly three centuries in 
anticipation of the skill of Marcel, the cofheur. 

The state of Connecticut in 1640 imported cotton from the 
West Indies and sold it to their towns, and private enterprise 
undoubtedly obtained it at an earlier day, as in the Colony of 
Massachusetts Bay. 

The packing of cotton gave trouble then and remains a live 
issue to this day, as an organization was formed in Boston last 
February to mitigate this difficulty. 

John Hull, the most enterprising Boston merchant of his 
day and the treasurer of the Commonwealth for many years, 
writes that he had received from the West Indies two bags of 
" vile cotton woole," which he sends to a customer who evi- 
dently comes to the same opinion when he finds in the middle 
of a bag " much fowle cotton " and makes reclamation upon 
Hull who is obliged to make amends. Evidently the " dogtail " 
grade has no claim as modern slang. 

The supply of cotton was provided for by an active export 
trade in what was practically a foreign product, until long after the 
invention of the American cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793 
which provided for the raw material the entirely different com- 
mercial conditions of cotton manufacturing. 



21 



THE SUPPLY OF WOOL. 



The shortage of wool received due attention of the Court by 
the act of August 22, 1654, in which the growth of sheep was 
encouraged by an act whose preamble stated that: — 

" Whereas this countrje is at this tjme in great strcights in respect 
of cloathing, and the most likeljest way tending to our supply in that 
respect is the rajsingand keeping of sheepe wthin our jurisdiccon," 

and in detail the exporting of ewes is forbidden as well as the 
injunction" that none shall be killed until they are two years old. 

The effect of these and earlier provisions for increase of sheep 
for the sake of their wool was little short of marvellous. 

There were 1,000 sheep in Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1642, 
and in 1660 the English Council made a report that the Colony 
had 100,000 sheep and was also buying wool from the Dutch, At 
the earlier date at least they were sending staves and salt fish 
to Spain which were traded for wool. 

CORDAGE. 

Vessels of that day were equipped with revolving hooks for 
laying cordage which was the first textile manufacturing of the 
Colony. These rope-making heads turned by hand, contined 
without serious modifications until recent time, about 200 years 
after the landing, were also set up on shore and rope making 
carried on at first in the open, but there was so much available 
space for this purpose that information onthesubject comes by way 
of incident rather than designed record. In this way, it is known 
that John and Philip Varen made rope in Salem in 1635, and 
John Harrison, on Purchase street, at Boston in 1641, and there 
were others wherever rope was wanted and hemp available, and it 
was not until there was a larger population afterthe next century 
came in that there appears any legislation on the subject other 
than the early acts of the court relative to the cultivation and 
treatment of hemp already cited, and these pertained to its 
ultimate use for weaving:. 



22 

In the later days, we learn that the selectmen of Boston on 
April 12, 1702, allowed EDWARD GRAY to make use of the 
highway near Lieutenant HOLMES to make ropes at a rent of 
twenty shillings a year in the future and seven shillings a year 
in the past, and later, on May 17, 1708, -the town of Boston 
gave " Edward Sheaf leaf to set up some posts in the training- 
field to make ropes on." After the rope walks between Pearl 
and Atkinson (now Congress) streets had been destroyed by 
fire and considered to be a hazard to the buildings in that 
vicinity, the town granted in 1794 lands west of Charles street 
and the Common which were called " rope walk lands." The 
ropes were first made in the open, but as this was too much of 
a pleasant weather business like the making of hay, four covered 
rope walks were built and these later proved to be such a fire 
hazard to buildings which had extended in that direction, at the 
fire which destroyed them in 1806, that after several years' 
negotiations the city bought the lands in 1828 for $35,000, and 
the tract forms the present Public Garden. 

The problem in regard to cordage was that of the raw material 
and not its method of manufacture, as every sailor knew how to 
lay hemp, and there was no need of legislation upon its 
manufacture. 

THE SPINNINC; SCHOOLS OF BOSTON. 

About 1720 the question of instruction in spinning took a 
distinctively different position from that of the Colony seventy 
years before. 

In place of a system organized on the basis of individual 
instruction to small groups, in the fields or elsewhere working 
with distaff or in a dwelling at a spinning wheel, there was a 
general movement for vocational schools, although they left that 
word and not much else as to methods for modern instructors. 

The suddenness of the achievement and its grasp upon the 
community was remarkable, and while there must have been 
some cause for a sentiment which enlisted the intense affiliation 
of all classes of the community, yet the economic principle which 



23 

must have existed does not appear in any marked change of 
commercial or sociological conditions. 

Although there are no citations to confirm the opinion, yet it 
appears as if this movement must have had some connection 
with the organized opposition of the English spinners and 
weavers of cotton, which found voice in the English law of 1721 
forbidding the wearing of dyed or printed cotton goods " except 
blue calicoes, muslins or fustians." The first two of which at 
that time were imported from Calcutta, and indicated the hand 
of the powerful East India Company in amending legislation. 

The people of New England had grown to appreciate cotton, 
which was then as it is now the cheapest of fibres, and naturally 
desired to provide for its continuance before any similar pro- 
hibitions should be attempted for New England by the mother 
country. 

While allusion is made to the poor in some of the records, 
they were " always with us," and as the spinning schools were 
begun seventy years after the establishment of public schools, 
there is nothing in any such references to warrant an opinion 
that they were tributary to a mendicant class, but it is evident 
that they were framed for the general welfare of the community. 

It is unfair for some writers to apply the term " spinning 
craze" to this movement, as instead of being ephemeral, it 
endured for over fifty years, when it was stopped by the stirring 
events of the Revolution. 

The endorsement of these schools by those of social position 
was indicated by the establishment of organizations of ladies 
who would meet and spin, while the clergyman would discourse 
to them, and the easy running Saxony wheel did not disturb 
the spinning of yarns while that of yarn went on. 

Shortly before the Revolution, these spinning societies took 
an important part in stirring up local zeal, as serving a similar 
purpose to what has been done by other organizations equally 
far afield from their original object in movements preceding 
political overturns in many countries. 

The reiteration of considering, referring to committees, 



24 

resolving, and appropriating for spinning schools, drags its 
weary way through fifty and more years of town records. 

The records for the most part fail to indicate what was 
actually accomplished, but the fact of the renewal of the resolu- 
tions on the subject indicates that the former measures had not 
been permanent, but that the purpose of the people was 
unchanged. 

In the perspective of nearly two centuries, the years appear 
close together, and the brief records omit the obvious of that 
day, but the very pertinacy with which the subject was attacked 
by so many different people with their varied points of view 
during two generations, indicate these measures appealed to 
public sentiment as a living need. 

Without assuming to cite in detail, a general review of this 
industrial movement will illustrate the definite purpose of a 
community for over half a century. 

Long preliminary to the establishment of these schools, the 
selectmen of Boston on April 13, 1702, voted to buy some 
spinning wheels to provide work for the poor, evidently an 
instance of that wisest form of charity which places the needy 
in a self-supporting condition. 

It should be noted that in 1718, a number of Irish spinners 
arrived and were assigned land on the west side of the Merrimac 
river below Manchester, N. H. The site was unsatisfactory and 
many of them moved to different parts of the Province, espec- 
ially to Boston, where they excited the enthusiasm of the people 
for spinning, and a spinning school was formed by them which 
met on the Common before the establishment of spinning 
schools by the town. It may be worth the while to note that 
these people introduced the cultivation of the first potatoes into 
New England, although they had been brought in small quanti- 
ties from Bermuda as early as 1636, and were served as a 
rarity at Harvard College commencement dinner in 1708. 

The town of Boston voted on March 14, 1720, to establish a 
spinning school in which the pupils had not merely free instruc- 
tion but board for the first three months and after that time the 



25 

yarn should be bought from them, and also premiums for good 
work. Three hundred pounds were loaned to the school for 
seven years, and twenty spinning wheels ordered. 

Daniel Oliver, a Boston merchant, one of the Roy^al 
Council, and also chairman of the town committee appointed to 
establish a spinning school in 1720, built at an expense of 
£600 a spinning school next to Barton's Ropewalk near to 
th° Craigie Bridge, for the use' of the town, to which he 
bequeathed the building. He died July 23, 173 1. This appears 
to be the site of the spinning school, although the report of the 
committee at the meeting December 27, 1720, recommended as 
the site of the spinning school, the " cellar most made " in front 
of Captain SOUTHACKS, which is the site of the Scollay building 
formerly in ScoUay's square but I do not find any record of the 
acquisition of the site or the construction of the building, although 
several histories refer to Scollay's Square as the site of the 
school. 

This subject was further taken up by a town meeting Sep- 
tember 28, 1720, which according to some authorities, resulted in 
the erection of a large building known as the Manufactory House 
on Long Acre (nowTremont) Street, where Hamilton Place now 
enters. A large figure of a woman with a distaff was painted 
on the westerly wall. 

Although both the records and local histories contain many 
references to this building which was an important feature in 
industrial development, but little is known about it. It is quite 
probable that the name was applied to two buildings, or to 
extensive enlargements of the first one, as there is evidence of 
purchase of land and expenditures on the building by the 
Province on the Manufactory House up to the summer of i754- 

The reference to the provision of board for the pupils was so 
inconsistent with a town school, as to raise a query which was 
answered in part by the action of the Provincial Legislature 
purchasing the Manufactory House in 1748, and granted to the 
town of Boston four townships for its support and the use of 
the Provincial Frigate for the transportation of the scholars. 



26 

In 1735 the Province levied a tax on carriages to support 
the spinning school and this statute was repealed in 1753, in 
which year the town of Boston passed an ordinance for a similar 
tax for the same purpose. 

This provincial legislation on the school and its maintenance 
indicates that it was a provincial as well as a town institution, 
and gives a reason why board was provided for the scholars. 

In 1762 the Manufactory House was ordered sold, but the 
sale did not take place, perhaps from lack of a purchaser, and 
it remained standing until 1806, when Hamilton Place was run 
through its site. 

When this spinning school was opened there was a large 
spinning bee on the common, where many women operated their 
spinning wheels. Chief Justice Samuel Sewall, who was the 
moderator of the town meeting when the spinning school was 
authorized, presided on this occasion. 

In 1753, on the fourth anniversary of the society, there was 
another large spinning bee held on the common at which 300 
weavers were in three rows, with their leader borne on the 
shoulders of men, and a large number of weavers with their 
leader weaving on a raised platform. Rev. Dr. SAMUEL COOPER 
"improved" the occasion by a discourse. This alTair attracted 
to the town the largest number of people ever known at any 
one time. 

The town of Boston voted in 1754 to use the Old Town 
House on the site of the present Old State House, for a spin- 
ning school and appropriated ^50, old tenor, to put the build- 
ing in repair. 

Charlestown had taken similar action in regard to its old town 
house the preceding year. 

Another movement in textile instruction is indicated by the 
town notice September 2, 1762, that the spinning school in the 
Manufactory House is again opened and that any person may 
learn to spin without charge and be paid for their spinning after 
the first three months, and that a premium of ;^i8 old tenor is 
offered to the four best spinners. 



At a town meeting April 4, 1769, a committee of which 
William Molyneaux, a leading Boston merchant of Huguenot 
ancestry, born in 1716 and died October 22, 1774, was the 
chairman, reported in favor of setting up spinning schools in 
various parts of the city, and hiring rooms and spinning wheels, 
and the employment of school mistresses, and buying wool 
which " can be converted into shalloons, durants, pamblitts, 
callamancoes, durois, legathies, and in general men's summer 
wear." None of these fabrics are knowm by this name today, 
or indeed what manner of cloth, other than they were woolen 
goods. 

The action of the town varied somewhat from the recom- 
mendation of the committee. The whole project was put into 
the hands of Mr. MOLYNEAUX to whom the town gave i^200 to 
purchase equipment and hire rooms and employ school 
mistresses, and also loaned him .;^300 to purchase wool. 

I have been unable to learn anything of the several places 
which it was authorized should be hired for this purpose, except 
that the Manufactory House was granted him for the purpose 
for seven years at an annual rental of five peppercorns. It 
should be remembered that this building was then the property 
of the Province and not of the town. 

A year later, March, 1770, we learn that he had a large 
number of spinning wheels and had engaged rooms for enabling 
many young women to earn their support. 

The energy of Mr. Molyneaux inspired great activity in 
spinning schools throughout the community outside of Boston 
and large quantities of cotton and woolen goods were made. 

In this good work Mr. MOLYNEAUX had personally advanced 
amounts beyond the appropriations, and at the town meeting in 
March, 1770, he requested a further allowance from the town 
in reimbursement, but the question was laid over until an 
adjourned meeting when Justice Dana could be present and 
give legal advice and at the later meeting Justice Dana was 
in attendance and gave his opinion that he doubted whether 
the town could legally remit the amount asked for, and no 



28 

further action was taken except to give Mr. MoLYNEAUX, '• a 
vote of thanks for his faithful discharge relative to the spinning 
business." 

While Mr. MoLYNEAUX may have longed for an hour of 
Judge Sewell, who presided at the town meeting when spin- 
ning schools were authorized fifty years before, he did not rest 
here, but at once presented a memorial to the General Court in 
which for the first time during this fifty years there is any dis- 
closure of methods and equipment of this succession of spinning 
schools, and this action also indicates the close relation between 
town and Province in regard to these schools. 

He states that they have thoroughly instructed at least three 
hundred children in the art of spinning, and to whom a large 
amount has been later paid in wages, and that he has received 
only a loan from the town of ;^500 without interest, while 
between ^^"11,000 and ^12,000 has been expended in fitting 
up the machinery; the first amount is evidently old tenor, but 
not the later ones. 

The equipment of this institution is interesting as it includes 
on hand 40,000 skeins of fine yarn fit to make any kind of 
women's wear and a large amount of dyestuffs; and for the 
plant, a large number of spinning wheels which he had made, 
also " complete apparatus " among which is cited twisting and 
winding mills, fifty looms, furnaces for hot and cold presses, 
and dyehouse with large copper tanks. 

There does not appear to be any record showing that this 
memorial received different treatment from the usual govern- 
ment claim, but whatever may have been the injustice of town 
and Province, the official record shows that the people owed a 
great debt of gratitude to this wise merchant in giving of his 
skill and his fortune toward the extension of the textile art in 
such a manner that the immediate results made many women 
self-supporting at a time when the opportunities for work out- 
side of domestic employment were few. 

I have omitted all reference to the long continued petitions, 
votes and appropriations relative to the linen duck manufacture 



•2i) 

in the town of Boston, as it was at best a manufacturing scheme, 
or a succession of them, by promoters which was brought to an 
end by the granting of a petition to discharge the obhgations of 
the surviving members of the Linen Manufactory as the enter- 
prise had been a faikire. It does not appear that there ever 
was any provision for the textile education of the young in the 
enterprise. 

Sails in northern countries were always made of linen, until 
Seth Bemis made duck from sea island cotton at Watertown 
in 1809. A few years ago sea island cotton was used in making 
at New Hartford, Conn., a set of sails for one of the defenders 
of the International cup. 

In closing this account of the sagacity and enterprise in textiles 
of the people of Massachusetts Bay, it may be well to note that 
an important provision for the beginnings of the manufacture of 
cotton goods at about the time of the Revolution rested upon 
the wisdom of Governor JOHN WiNTHROP, who in 1633 encour- 
a^red the development of all water powers near to settlements 
for grain mills and saw mills. 

These mills are said to have been generally built of stone and 
were one story in height. One hundred and fifty years later 
when power spinning machinery was surreptiously imported, 
many of these grain and saw mills were extended a story higher 
with wood, and there were twenty-seven such spinning mills in 
Massachusetts before 1812, — none of which are believed to be 
now standing,— but the charter and vested rights of many a 
water-power in this Commonwealth rest upon the run-of-stone 
which they must still retain. 

The inventions of the spinning jenney by Hargreaves in 
1667, and the spinning frame by Arkwright in 1769, which 
surreptitiously reached this country just before the Revolution 
were the beginning of the end of making cloth solely as a 
domestic occupation, and cotton manufacturing had begun. 

It should be stated there was always one marked difference 
between hand made cotton goods in Old England and New 
En^Tland, that whereas in New England such cloth was made 



30 

entirely of cotton, and inventories in Colonial times show that it 
was appraised at a higher price than linen, but pure hand-made 
cotton was not made in Old England until after 1760, but was 
woven with linen warp and cotton filling, yet the English 
imported a large amount of calico, which was the trade name for 
cotton cloth obtained from Calcutta whether white or hand 
printed. 

The extent of cotton manufacture involves amounts " beyond 
the dreams of avarice," and yet its increase had been largely the 
additional use by those within the zone of the cotton manufac- 
ture. Civilized people are using an increased amount of cotton 
cloth both in elaboration of dress, and of late years in the substi- 
tution of cotton for wool, either pure or mixed in many fabrics. 

Yet the cotton manufacture has hardly made its mark among 
the unnumbered millions of the Orient or the barbarous people 
of warm countries. It has been estimated that only about 20 to 
25 per cent, of the population of the earth wearing cotton cloth, 
use manufactured goods. 

Labor in those countries is so cheap and land transportation so 
dear, that the differences in cost generally equate themselves in 
a distance of fifty miles from navigable waters. 

The great amount of concentration of human skill in the 
cotton manufacture has accomplished wonderful results in 
reducing the cost of tlie manufactured product, and therefore 
extending its usage. 

Although it may have made the cheaper class of goods more 
uniform in their quality, yet the finer varieties of fabrics still con- 
tinue to be the result of handicraft. 

The finest muslins are still spun and woven by hand in India 
by a cult whose skill was well established at the time of the 
earliest acquisitions of authority by the East India Company in 
that country. 

The artistic weaving of the World is that of the Gobelins, who 
still maintain handicraft methods at their little Flemish Colony 
in Paris, where they were established by Louis XIV., who also 
introduced the Merino sheep into France. 



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